With Paradox's upcoming expansion for HOI3 coming out soon, I'd like to go over what the mod team plans to do for the future. At this point the FtM version of the mod has only a few things left to do, but those items are labor-intensive. The mod's game balance is off in some areas, the naval models decision needs to be finished, strategic resources need to be added, and the USSR needs its regions to be made, so more work needs to be done.
Based on the developer diaries released in Paradox's main forum, Their Finest Hour may give us the tools to fix a lot of the problems the mod and the base game currently have. Depending on how moddable it is, the new landing craft feature might be able to fix the silly suicide invasion problems. The elite unit feature could potentially allow us to limit capital ship construction and model the naval treaties, and there are other features we'd like to have and work with. On top of that, several parts of the HPP will be in the expansion, which will make it very easy for us to port the mod. You'll have to wait until it's released to find out what will be in the expansion due to legal agreements; in the meantime you can check out the dev diaries and official release pictures for clues. I can say that the map used in the TFH screenshots should look familiar :)
Due to the amount of work still needed to get the mod's FtM version in the same state its SF was in as well as the new features we really want to leverage in the upcoming expansion, we've decided to stop working on the mod's FtM version when the expansion comes out. We don't want a repeat of our SF->FtM port, which wasn't stable or ready until half a year after FtM came out (part of the reason was the map thing I mentioned earlier). We want a version that's stable with TFH to be ready quickly. The mod team also has real jobs to worry about as well as family obligations, so our free time is limited and we want to focus on moving forward and not delay working on getting the mod TFH-compatible. That's the main reason, really. As working adults with families we don't have the free time to work on versions for both FtM and TFH.
So, here's what we plan to do. Shortly after the expansion is released we'll post our final FtM version of the mod. The manual will be updated and we'll extensively test it to make sure it won't crash. However, we won't fix all of the balance problems, some features won't be fully integrated, and strategic resources will be missing since our planned implementation isn't done yet. What we'll end up with is a mostly-finished mod that won't crash and can still be very enjoyable depending on your tolerance for certain balance issues.
Questions? Comments? Feel free to ask away in the comments section.
